Aimez-vous Puccini?

What is it about Puccini that sets him apart from other opera composers?  First, we might observe that, like Newton, he stood on the shoulders of giants, in particular those of Verdi.  Certainly, Puccini had a wonderful gift for melody and his mastery of orchestration is unsurpassed.  He also had a highly developed sense of poetry, holding his librettists to very exacting standards, and he had a tremendous feeling for drama.  But I think there's more.

It's often been said that Puccini loved his heroines.  That is certainly true.  But I'm going to argue that it's his love for all his characters that really makes him unique.  The first and perhaps most obvious example is Scarpia.  Evil he may be, but at the same time, we are drawn to his character likes moths to a flame.  Why?  Because Puccini loved him too. Why else would he bare his soul to us in the dramatic conclusion to act one of Tosca? And what is more obvious than the initial contrast between Liu and Turandot and the love that almost instantly flows from the suicide Liu to her nemesis Turandot.

However, I think it's in Il Trittico where this love of characters shines the brightest.  I was fortunate to see the production at the Met last Saturday and the three operas have been in my head ever since.  In Gianni Schicchi, his only comic opera, it's not surprising to find that he loves all of the characters.  However naughty we know them all to be, the music wraps them all in loving affection, especially Lauretta's famous O mio Babbino Caro.  Even the flawed doctor (from the school of Bologna) and lawyer are treated with gentleness and kindness.

In Suor Angelica, Puccini gives singing parts to no less than ten of the nuns, not including Angelica herself and the Abbess.  He wouldn't do that if if he didn't love his characters so much.  Instead he could have had just a few parts to cover all of the back story.  The music of course is exquisite and how can we not all love the pure and oppressed Angelica and want to share in her salvation?

But I contend that it is Il Tabarro that demonstrates this love Puccini had for his creations most forcefully.  In this opera, there are only six parts, apart from the ballad-seller and other ambient characters.  But the music for each character is crafted with extra loving care -- in direct contrast to the awfulness of the situation that they find themselves in.  Indeed, the participants in this rather gritty example of verismo are suffering life rather than enjoying it.  They make the best, or worst, of their situation without any hope of an improvement in the squalor.  These are the kinds of protagonists that Bob Dylan describes in Only a pawn in their game.

But Puccini's music lifts them right out of their hopelessness, none more so perhaps than la Frugola (the rummager, or ferret), with her dream of a little retirement house with their cat at her feet.  The style of this aria is not lyrical, nor dramatic.  It is in fact more like a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song.  But its upbeat jollity and the high call of the oboe help transform it from the mundane to the sublime.

No character is more poignantly set, however, than Michele, who in the scene with Giorgetta (before all hell breaks loose and he murders Luigi), sings some of the loveliest music ever written for an operatic bass.

Yet, the crowning glory of this opera is the duet sung by the ill-fated Giorgetta and Luigi about their roots in the Paris suburb of Belleville.  How could Puccini takes such pedestrian, banal thoughts and elevate them to one of the most glorious duets in the whole of opera?  Simply because he loved his characters.  Not only his heroines but their lovers too, and their friends and hangers-on too.

Not only did Puccini endow all his characters with love, but it is love that is the foundation on which all of his operas are built.